


A Lyke Wake Dirge

by TheMusicalHermit



Series: Tumblr Transfers [6]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Original Character - Freeform, burial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-07-11 00:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15960725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMusicalHermit/pseuds/TheMusicalHermit
Summary: “Were you close to him,” she asked after a few moments of silence.He giggled and grinned, trying and failing to recall his uncle’s face as he stared out at the blinding snow. “Yeah, I was.”There was another pause before she pressed on. “What happened to him?”“Seems I’ve misplaced him, doll. Us morons do that sometimes.”—A side story written forThe Mountainand the last openly flashback type thing I will write for that tale. Best read after Chapter 15.





	A Lyke Wake Dirge

**Author's Note:**

> As of posting this I am on hiatus due to a multitude of real life issues popping up. I am still working on my Overwatch fics, but I do not know when the next update to them will come.
> 
> A Lyke Wake Dirge is an old English song from Yorkshire about the travels the soul of the departed will undertake.

“This one night, this one night,” he sang softly, the shovel and the hard earth blistering his hand though his glove. “Every night and all…”

_His uncle was late for breakfast. He had come back from a trip to town just two days ago. He had come back with another big crate of those cans marked with four x’s._

“Fire and fleet and candle light…” Sweat rolled down his forehead, stinging his eyes and sending yet more liquid coursing down his cheeks to spatter the red earth.

_He had wanted to dig a hole and bury the crate. But no. No, no. He’d remembered. He’d remember the shouting and arm grabbing and shaking the last time he got rid of the golden liquid._

He should have gotten rid of the crate. This was his fault.

_He’d hidden and remembered better days. He’d remembered the city with all those churches; how the priest had been friendly, even if he didn’t know whether his parents were in Heaven or Hell. If the priest didn’t know, that meant they were still alive. Which meant the reason they never came home was that they didn’t want him, not when they had their new, perfect baby. Not even his uncle wanted him - he wanted the expensive, foul-smelling liquids he always brought home. And why would he want him, he’d thought. If not for him, his uncle could have stayed in that city with the churches. He’d have had the Church to help him._

“And Christ,” he began, only to pause and swallow at the feeling of something caught in his throat.

_His uncle had found him quickly, apologising over and over, holding back tears and promising to watch their favourite movie together, to sing along and act it out like they always did. His uncle had said he’d stop, that he’d get better. His uncle had lied._

What was the next line? His uncle would know. His uncle had sung this song over every raider that his traps caught. He laughed softly, wondering if his uncle would be disappointed in him.

_His uncle was late for breakfast. Usually the smell of fried eggs and sand goanna woke him up. He eyed the half-empty crate. Maybe the sound of a can opening would help?_

“If clothe and shoe thou never gave,” he continued, the pit growing cooler the deeper he went. “Every night and all, the thorns shall prick thee to thy bone…”

_His uncle hadn’t been snoring when he went in to wake him. Something stank; this hadn’t seemed odd to him at the time. He’d thought that maybe his uncle had had another accident. Grunting softly, he turned him on his back and shook him by his belly. It jiggled, but his uncle didn’t respond. “C’mon, get up,” he’d said. “You promised you were gonna show me a new snare today.” Then he’d seen his face. His uncle’s lips were dark, his closed eyes surrounded by shadows, and a dried crust of bile coated the side of his face._

“From Brig o’ Dread when thou may’st pass,” he sang, vocalising the repeated line. “To Purgatory come’st at last…”

_Reaching out, he’d pressed a finger to his cheek only to snatch it away, startled by the coldness. He doesn’t know how long he’d stood there, wide eyed, before shaking his uncle by the shoulder. Telling him to wake, shouting at him to get up. His demands quickly devolved into pleas._

He threw the shovel aside and jumped out of the pit, humming still. Dragging the… thing wrapped in a soiled sheet to the pit, he threw it in. Filling the pit was easier than digging it. “But if meat or drink thou never gave,” he sang as he covered the heap of earth with rocks. “Every night and all, the fire shall burn thee to thy bone…”

_He ran from the room, back to the kitchen. His breath came in short spurts as he tugged at his hair, turning in circles. For the first time in years he shouted for people whose faces he had long forgotten. For his mother, for his father. But no one came._

He thumbed the octagonal piece of inscribed metal as he took a swig of the foul-tasting golden liquid before pouring some out, just as his uncle had always done. “And Christ receive thy soul.”


End file.
